Elisabeth Kyle

Elisabeth Kyle, pseudonym of Agnes Mary Robertson Dunlop, (born 1 January 1901, died 23 February 1982), was a British writer of novels and children's books. She also wrote under the name Jan Ralston.

Agnes Mary Robertson Dunlop was born in Ayr Scotland on 1 January 1901. Her mother was Elizabeth Riddell Dunlop and her father was James Dunlop, a lawyer in the family firm. He was keen on literature, introducing his daughter to the classics and monitoring carefully the books to which she was exposed. He died when she was nine years old but had a lasting influence on her life. As a child she had no particular intention of becoming an author, and when she finished her education became a journalist, first with the Manchester Guardian and then with the Glasgow Herald. She had always enjoyed making up stories and a friend persuaded her to try her hand at writing; her earliest published works were stories in children's annuals. Kyle mostly wrote books for children, producing a stream of titles between the 1930s and 1980. Many of these were historical novels designed for a young audience, with heroines such as Charlotte Brontë, Mary II of England, Florence Nightingale and Clara Schumann. However, she also wrote several adult novels including The Begonia Bed (1934), The Pleasure Dome (1943), The Tontine Belle (1951), and The Other Miss Evans (1958).